The use of the Internet as a means to share photographs as digital images has been growing rapidly. This activity will continue to grow as more consumers (and businesses) use digital cameras and scanners. There are projected to be about 82 million households in the United States with Internet access. Approximately, 42 million of these households will have either a digital camera and/or a scanner. Of those 42 million households it is estimated that 28 million will use the Internet to share images. These estimated number of households sharing images over the Internet grows to an estimated 69 million by 2007.
Currently, there are two predominant means by which digital images are shared over the Internet, email and web photo-hosting sites. Approximately 30% of households sharing images over the Internet make use of online photo-hosting sites such as Ophoto™ and Photopoint™. Approximately 60% use email to send digital images to others.
Online photo-hosting sites provide a number of benefits to their users. Online photo-hosting sites typically do a good job in presenting images to users. The performance of the presentation is usually good for both dialup access and broadband users, since the images used in the presentation can be scaled to fit the space and bandwidth available. In addition, these services are able to integrate into the image presentation access to additional services such as ordering prints, calendars, etc. These services offer some measure of privacy by allowing image owners some control over who may see their photographs.
Current photo-hosting sites have a number of problems that they have yet to overcome that prevents wider use of their services and has made profitability difficult. The process of uploading pictures from a home PC to a website is time consuming due to current bandwidth limitations. The user interface for this upload process typically forces users to browse through directories on the home PC and identify pictures by filename. This is a task many users choose to avoid. The perceived loss of privacy is another issue that keeps many users from using the services of photo-hosting sites. User's who store photos on these sites must “handover” their images to the site. The bankruptcies of a number of these sites have raised the issue of who owns the images once they have been uploaded with the answer to the consumer being that the site owns the images. Use of these sites requires registration by those storing images on the site as well as by those who just wish to view images they have been invited to see. Registration typically requires disclosure of information that many consumers are hesitant to provide for fear of it being sold to third parties. Whether this concern for privacy is based in fact is irrelevant since the perception is real and appears to be deeply ingrained. Due to competition and infrastructure costs, photo-hosting sites are moving towards a subscription-based model with fees for storage and other previously free services. These “subscription” fees have undoubtedly kept many user's away. Further, Napster has raised the issue of whether site providers are responsible for enforcing copyrights, particularly for those sites that support public photo albums with searching capabilities.
Email is clearly the most used application on the Internet today. Its no surprise, given the perceived and real disadvantages of photo-hosting services, that email is also the dominant means for sharing digital photographs. Email has many advantages, the primary one being that users are very familiar with it and comfortable with it. Email allows users to share images and at the same time provide context for the image(s) in the text in the body of the email. Its person-to-person, making it personal with no perceived third-party intervening. This personal nature of email has fostered the perception of privacy that persists among users despite the many privacy warnings appearing in the media. There is no perceived third-party who “owns” the images despite the fact that emails and attachments may be stored for indefinite periods of time on the user's mail host and the various mail relays used to deliver them. This person-to-person aspect of email has further freed the infrastructure providers from responsibility for copyright enforcement.
Just as with most everything in life, email has its downside. The process of “attaching” images to an email involves the same requirement to find images by navigating through file system directories and identifying images by filename that the image upload process has for photo-hosting services. Many users who have sent an email with an image attached have experienced the pain of discovering how long it takes to send a full-resolution image over a dial-up connection. To resize, crop, or lower the resolution of an image before emailing it requires the acquisition and use of another software program to perform the editing on the image. This lo: process usually results in two image files for the user: the original image plus the email version. Further, ephotomail clients keep a copy of all attachments until the sent emails are deleted by the user (typically this requires two deletes, one from the sent folder and one from the trash folder).
The receiver of an image goes through perhaps more pain than the sender during the download. Typically, the user doesn't know what is clogging up his email until its fully downloaded to the ephotomail client. Many users are afraid to open unrecognized attachments for fear of viruses. Those brave enough to open the attachments often find that there is no viewer available or configured to handle the file type. Those fortunate enough to see the images must view them one-at-a-time. Those wanting a print of an image either have to save the attachment, find it in the file system, copy it to a CD, and take it to a photo shop; or must upload the image to a web-based print provider. To manage received photos users must save the attached images and manage them as raw files, use a separate software program to manage them locally, or upload them to a photo-hosting service. The attached images use up local storage until the receiver deletes the associated emails from the photomail client (again a two delete process).
Despite the disadvantages of sharing images by email, users have adopted this method in large numbers. Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system for sharing images over the Internet that preserves the advantages of using email, while at the same time addressing email's most bothersome disadvantages. The system should be both easy to use for the user, and also easy to understand. The present invention addresses such a need.